Someone pinch me!

Today was quite an excellent day. I had to go to a non-credit research seminar, which was entirely useless for someone with my research background - but I gave it a go just to be sporting. It took a couple hours and we actually have some work to do outside of class before the 2nd conclusionary seminar in two weeks.

Afterwards, I had lunch with a gent who is about 50 or 60 and is a really cool guy. He's from South Africa and has been very successful financially, but he never had the experience of attending a English/US university and he always said that he would if he had the chance. So here he is. He's definately the kind of guy to make friends with because he has enormous connections and wants to make the program as dynamic as possible.

Later I hung out with my friend Evan, who I must say, is one smooth operator. We basically did silly things like go to banks and mobile phone stores to see what types of deals we could get. But really, a great guy.

After I got back to Earl's Court, Larry and Vanessa showed up in town. They've been traveling in Italy on a post-bar vacation and are here for 4 days. We met up for some Indian food and some pints after. Great to see them. Nothing like seeing a friendly face in foreign parts.

Really though, i'm just struck by how great a time I'm having. My classes are going to be tough, but I'm really looking forward to kicking some major academic ass. I got my syllibus for my Northeast Asia class today and wow - there's a lot of material to cover. But i'm pretty excited about it and I'm ready to really put myself into it. It's different going to school in a foreign country. It's kind of hard to express, but I basically feel that I'm not just a student, I'm a representative of my country. And hopefully, I'm the best that my country has to offer. Less than 6% of Americans study abroad, so I feel like I have to really impress to do the US proud. I don't know; I guess I just want to really want to kick ass for many reasons, and that's just one of the dominant ones at the moment. Either way, I'm actually really excited about school, which is a very different take on things compared to my undergraduate years.